Cinema: The New Pictures: Jul. 1, 1935

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Nell Gwyn (British & Dominions), upon its arrival in the U. S. a year ago, was promptly banned by the Hays organization. Now released with a prolog and epilog containing what is meant to be its message, it turns out to be one of the more genteel specimens of British historical cinema, exhibiting England's pleasure-loving Charles II (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) as a calm sophisticate engaged in dignified adultery and his most celebrated mistress (Anna Neagle) as a good-tempered tavern jade who never goes further in vulgarity than sticking out her tongue at people she dislikes, and replying, when the king describes himself as the father of his people, that there are quite a lot of them. Equipped with a cast sheet which credits the dialog to King Charles, Mistress Nell, and Diarist Samuel Pepys, as well as to Miles Malleson, who wrote it, the picture traces the story of the royal liaison from its first moment, when Charles encounters Nell backstage at the Drury Lane Theatre, to its last, when he is apologizing to his court for dying so slowly and uttering to his brother James his famed admonition: "Let not poor Nelly starve." The prolog and epilog, presumably added to define for U. S. cinema audiences the proper reward of faithful and unselfish love, show Nell Gwyn dying in squalor.

To make a poor picture out of the lives of Nell Gwyn and Charles II would undoubtedly have been difficult. This one lacks esprit and the comedy of Nell's rivalry with the Duchess of Portsmouth, with which the middle of the picture is almost exclusively concerned, is frequently forlorn. Nonetheless, its subject and the sympathetic acting by two of the major luminaries of the British screen make it rate well as an honest and serviceable footnote on two of history's glamorous celebrities. Anna Neagle, born Robertson in London 31 years ago, was still Marjorie Robertson when she decided to give up coaching Cymnasium classes and hockey teams in a girls' school and join the chorus of Charlot's Revue in 1926. After three years as a chorus girl, she visited the U. S. in Wake Up and Dream. The efforts toward self- improvement which she then detected in U. S. chorus girls impressed her so deeply that she made serious efforts to enlarge her dancing and singing ability, took her mother's maiden name to change her luck and applied for the lead in Jack Buchanan's musicomedy Stand Up and Sing. Buchanan gave it to her. Since then, Anna Neagle has become, with stars like Jessie Matthews and Evelyn Laye, one of that group of musicomediennes who, idolized in England, are comparatively unknown in the U. S. She has also appeared in Bitter Sweet, The Flag Lieutenant, The Little Damozel, The Queen's Affair, none of which was widely exhibited in the U. S. Blonde, buxom, buoyant, Miss Neagle acts with considerably more bounce than subtlety. She lives in London, likes to go by boat to Scotland for week-end hikes in the Highlands, hopes to do a picture in Hollywood next year.